


about words and sunlight

by quinno



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, The Iliad - Homer, The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: ?? kind of, Alternate Universe - College/University, College, Crushes, Love at First Sight, M/M, Soulmates, apparently, just a lil poem where achilles falls for the new student at his college
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21863674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quinno/pseuds/quinno
Summary: basically, achilles falls in love.
Relationships: Achilles/Patroclus
Comments: 3
Kudos: 112





	about words and sunlight

achilles sits with his hand against the window and watches the boy walk across the green, his bag hanging lopsided off his left shoulder, his socks pulled up underneath the cuffs of his jeans; achilles was never strong with words, so eloquence isn’t the approach he takes with wording his feelings, and the boy is making him feel rather a lot of feelings. there is something about the royal sun collected by the flat plain of grass that's reflected in the perfect position to cover the boy with light, and there is something about the skip in the boy’s step, the one that has a feel of casuality to it (it is a stamp to say that he was just a normal person in the crowd. achilles doesn't see this - he's struck by so many feelings that suddenly the boy is the single most important person in the world.)

he stands out from the crowd like a single flower in a barren yard, to achilles. if achilles was going to express his strong, embarrassingly soft feelings for the boy, he would probably use hyperbole to the greatest degree and say that the boy is the prettiest boy he’d ever seen his whole life. he is the only one looking at the boy, but he doesn’t realise; in fact, he realises nothing but the boy until he’s passed all the way across the college green and through the gaping archway of the main hall building, the one that achilles hasn't been into once his whole time spent at the school.

he, achilles, says nothing. what was there to say? was this how the folks of old tales felt when they saw something celestial in the sky above them? was this what it was like to feel your soul slot into place with one others? and what is he to do about it? achilles knows only action, and his chair is pushing from beneath his feet before the last peak of the boy’s backpack is even out of sight beneath the crowd.

“where’re you going?” a voice, a distraction from the most important task at hand. it’s odysseus, a year older than achilles, and not half as strong, and with a cleverness that presents in a measly sort of freckle all over him. he stands too, as achilles does, trailing behind, ready to latch on and have achilles tow him along.

“main hall.” achilles says simply - remember, he is not a fan of words. he doesn’t look at odysseus, as he’d rather look into the sunlight from the window, the sunlight that to him is just a second-hand glow of the boy who is quickly becoming a minor deity in his mind.

with that, his destination is locked and set in place, already setting the sails for the journey. achilles turns on his heel, a systematic ninety degree angle, (or perhaps it is the classroom he stands in that is turned by his great foot), and treads to the door. each step is the step of a new boy, a changed boy who has to relearn to walk in a brand new world. he's in search of the ruler of the new land, that being, the boy. he would like to request if he could live in this new kingdom forever.

this boy makes achilles think in poems that, if released, could shatter the image that everyone at this school has of him. it’s almost exciting, to keep such scalding material so close to the edge of a surface. 

as he walks away from the classroom, through the corridor, through the oak doors and into the courtyard that so recently was blessed by the presence of the boy, achilles realises that everything has changed, and only to him. the college buildings are still old and curated and not respected by the students, who are still a collection of excitement, of wide futures and personality to fill buckets and a group to be feared and loved. only his world is tinted, and only as of one thing, or, more accurately, one person. 

odysseus follows him like a disease, but luckily achilles is immune to him by now (not that he dislikes his friends, but sometimes the things in his head are just more important than them), and he carries on as if he were alone. through the warmly dust-insulated corridor and out into the courtyard, into the late autumn sun that’s painted its face to look like summer, achilles goes. it feels good to have the sunlight in his eyes, knowing that it's the same sunlight that bathed his newly beloved; achilles can't stop thinking these thoughts of grand romance, and they shock him mildly and pleasantly as they each come to mind.

“can i ask why we're going to the main hall?” odysseus says, still behind achilles only obscured by the distant focus of his attention. 

“i’m trying to find someone,” achilles says, emphasis on the “i” - this is his quest, and no one else’s, of course - and he leaves it at that. odysseus does not need to know any more than that, he decides.

“who?” odysseus will always want to know more

“it doesn't matter,” achilles tells him, even though it really does. five minutes ago, he had perhaps the biggest breakthrough of his life; nothing has ever mattered more than this, not that achilles is prone to exaggeration or anything. 

he walks quickly across the green, his feet treading in the footsteps that he’d watched the boy walk just minutes ago, mimicking the pathway that he took. people walk past him; they’re unimportant, even though they’re just like the boy who has captured his feelings, and it makes him realise that this boy is something truly special.

up the marble steps and into the main hall, the first section of the building, where the walls are lined with posters of the school clubs achilles has little care for, where people are milling around aimlessly. he isn’t there. achilles turns quickly to the next room on, the larger room, the only other place the boy could have gone to, odysseus still behind him. and he isn’t there either.

“who are we looking for?” asks odysseus; he isn’t really used to not understanding achilles’ actions, as odysseus makes a point of trying to understand everything that happens around him.

“it doesn’t matter.” achilles repeats. “they’re not here.”

“you mean we came all the way over here for nothing?” odysseus whines, leaning against the wall and placing his grimy shoe against the archaic brickwork.

“no, not nothing.” achilles says; he is shaken to the bones, to the very muscles that hold him up, to the chemicals in his head that make him feel things. he leans against the wall too, to ground himself; it's disorientating when the world rebuilds itself around you. 

and so, that is that. although there was no real previous chapter of achilles’ life to conclude, a new one had begun, with language and colour and structure to contrast that of the paragraphs that had come before it. achilles left the main hall in a state of pensive recovery and, after managing to get loose of odysseus, returned to his dorm (he shares it with two students called ajax and menelaus, who, luckily for him, tend to be out during the day and for most the night, and only come back to the residence in the early hours of the morning to power nap then demolish bowls of cereal that achilles usually pays for).

from that day forward, he sets out in the morning with the boy in mind and doesn't go to bed without pondering the latter too; one by one, the threads of wool begin to weave themselves together.

the boy’s name is patroclus, achilles soon learns, from people who look at him oddly for inquiring such a thing, thinking his is simply making conversation. achilles lets the name fill his head for hours, and he plays his romantic music bashfully in his dorm and whenever the whiny singers notate a girl’s name, he pretends that they said patroclus instead. his deity has a name; his feelings have a diagnosis, and it is surprisingly nice, with a taste that gets better the more he says it. 

he catches glimpses, and peeks, and distant flashes of a coffee-coloured backpack and brown hair, and off-hand mentions of a new boy, and the occasional warm voice that he feels like he knows, and no more. life splits into two paths, and achilles straddles them both, one foot on each, inching himself along one wobble at a time; he is a star sports student, a golden-haired golden-skinned golden-plaque golden-aged guy, a friend of many who gain more than he gains from calling him his friend, so well-liked that achilles finds even himself enticed by his own seduction. and when that all isn’t happening, or when he zones out from it happening, he is a lover, of some kind, either stumbling through the dark towards what he thinks is a burst of light or letting an unknown creature pull him beneath the surface and drag him under, the type of man who watches the sun set with his cds playing quietly in the other room and takes great fascination with dust particles. 

people notice, none of them the right people. “you’ve been weird recently,” says odysseus, and diomedes nods in agreement.

“what d’you mean?” asks achilles, knowing exactly what they mean, but pretending the opposite. he doesn't really care what they think, after all, but he will care if more people start thinking the same thing; therefore it's safe to at least ask them about it.

“you're just.. different.” diomedes says, as no one but achilles can further explain his change, and he wouldn't know the best words to do it, anyway.

achilles is convinced that it isn't him who is different, but in fact the world around him instead; it's life that has changed, not him, and it leads him to do different things, like opening the window in his dorm and not caring if anyone hears him playing the guitar for hours on end, or carefully looking at the face of every person he passes in the corridor, or smiling to himself whenever the sun comes out. he walks through hall with a swagger that has a genuine lightness driving it, and not just the natural waves of confidence that achilles is sure were bred into him by his esteemed parents, who received the gene from their parents and their ancestors before that. his steps fall into an upbeat rhythm, of high tempo, that goes with a melody that he realises he is searching for; a melody that must, surely, come from patroclus, in some way or shape or form that tunes can be passed by.

it is a fact that languid days slip away from achilles as he trails after this man that somehow has him hooked, days in which he ponders his feelings while stretched out on the grass of that very green where his initial infatuation had been conceived. it is late autumn, or early winter, and classes are slow, and achilles doesn’t care much for them, anyway (he’d always felt as if there was something else more important than academic work; he was nearly sure, now, that he’d found that something). achilles doesn’t feel the cold too harshly, but he notices that it’s warm this winter. he decides that the earth, too, is heated by a new love, even though he knows very well about global warming.

if he fell for patroclus in mid-october, then achilles finally lands in early december. 

rather ironically, the moment is set at sunset on a colder day than the rest that have lead up to it, on the tiny balcony of a flat that is barely bigger, at a party that achilles didn’t plan on attending until a few minutes before he arrived. inside the flat, the party was dripping hot, a sweaty kind of hot that achilles found increasingly unattractive, with the kinds of songs that achilles pretended he knew all the lyrics to playing over loudspeakers and drinks spilled on tables. achilles was stifling, perhaps even boiling, and, of course, the glimpse he caught of burnt gold from the glass balcony door was enough to pull him away, the light dragging him to an environment he knew he would prefer like a moth into a lighted candle. it is so romantic that the sun lead him to that balcony in that moment that achilles’ hands shake when he thinks of it for too long. it was as if the sun had been watching over patroclus for him ever since that first moment on the green.

fatefully expectably, the sunshine-soaked balcony was occupied by that very reason achilles had grown to love the sun so much; he stood with his elbows propped against the railing, his torso at a slight angle to his legs as he leant forward to observe the gold landscape, dipped head-to-toe in the burning last rays of the slowly retiring sol. as achilles opened the sliding glass door, patroclus turned his back on the sun to look at him, and the golden glow on the back of his head created a halo to frame his shadowed face. 

achilles knew this is how the ancient folks must have felt when graced by one of their beloved deities, for all rational thought he could have had left him in an instant; it was the first time he ever saw patroclus closer than the distance from his formroom to the courtyard, and the feelings were overwhelming. never in his whole life had achilles felt as strongly as this.

if achilles were a poet, he would wax verses upon stanzas upon epics about patroclus, about the heavy curtain of dark eyelashes that softened his eyes, his eyes that were hazelnut brown (just as achilles had imagined they'd be) but that glowed yellow like a cat’s in the sun, or about the moles and freckles pinpointed randomly over his full cheeks and gathered over the rounded end of his nose, or about the gentle placement of his body, the soft slope of his shoulders to his freckled arms in a casual lean against the balcony railing.

achilles is not a poet, and never will be. in fact, achilles could scarcely conjure up ordinary words of casual meaning to say to patroclus in this situation; the confidence he'd been raised to be full of was nothing when placed in front of something so delicate and beautiful. 

“is it alright if i stand out here for a while?” is all achilles was able to think of and execute as his system began to overheat from overexposure to the sun. it didn't show on the outside, but on the inside achilles’ wires were frying.

“yeah, of course,” patroclus said, pushing another puzzle piece into place; that was the warm voice achilles had heard snippets of, that was exactly the voice he was sure he'd heard before. achilles smiled, because he couldn't help himself from doing so, and the delight he felt when patroclus smiled back at him was, he decided, possibly the happiest any human has ever felt in all the course of the world.

“uh, you're new, aren't you?” somehow, somewhere within the melting of his innards, achilles was able to scoop up a handful of words and scrunch them into a sentence, a sentence that could, if cared for, grow into a conversation. it’s a rather impressive feat, considering that achilles has about as much control over words and language as he would have over a screaming baby.

“oh, yeah, i am.” patroclus smiled again, or, more like, his previous smile relit, slightly softer this time. he turned himself away from the railing fully, so that his whole body was facing towards achilles and not the blazing sun, engaging himself; achilles’ mission (have a conversation with patroclus) was already accomplished. if achilles was able to see past through the sun in his eyes, or past the overwhelming beauty of the man in front of him that could almost rival the radiant sun, he would have seen patroclus’ head tilt slightly to the left as he took in all of achilles respectively.

“i’m patroclus.” he stretched out his hand; the move felt romantically old-fashioned.

“mn.” achilles hummed, one of those softer grunts that’s meaning can range from ‘casual acknowledgement’ to ‘very gentle laughter’ to ‘pleasantly surprised’. achilles’ hum was one of pleasant and friendly recognition of patroclus’ introduction, but also a feeling of strong passion squeezed through the colander of achilles’ vocabulary. 

“i’m achilles.” he said. reaching out, he met patroclus’ hand gently, out of fear it might dissolve at his touch, or perhaps fear that patroclus would feel his hands shaking. they shook softly, barely touching, up and down three times, then patroclus let go and achilles pulled his own hand back far quicker than he’d intended too with a burning sensation left all over it. 

“ah, i’ve heard about you.” patroclus said, smiling wryly. their eyes almost, almost, meet.

achilles could not believe he’d made it this far; he felt like he’d been stabbed a long time ago and was probably supposed to be bleeding out sometime soon, but instead death just wasn’t coming. of course, that was a dramatic metaphor.

“from who?” he asked, genuinely intrigued, and also worried and already panicking quite a lot.

patroclus shrugged, turning back towards the sun for a second.

“oh, just brieses. she told me you're one of the popular kids, even though i wasn't sure you even got popular kids at uni..” 

piecing together information rather messily, achilles was able to recognise humour in there and so he smiled appropriately, whilst also trying to calculate what it means if patroclus has spoken with brieses. then he remembered that patroclus called him a popular kid, and decided that that needs sorting out first of all.

“you don't really, i just know loads of people..” he said, even though it’s more like lots of people know achilles. he shrugged, tried to act like he doesn’t really care about social status, and hopped onto the next piece of information he can remember to start something new from the remnants he left in his wake. “so, you're friends with brieses?”

patroclus nodded, fondly, and achilles found himself in shock of how cute just a simple mannerism could possibly be. 

“yeah, she kinda took me in, is helping me find my way around, that kinda stuff..” patroclus explained, his eyes flitting from achilles to the landscape behind him, his smile warm and kind. “i’d probably be really lost all the time without her.” he laughed at himself, softly. achilles was smitten, and so terribly endeared.

“y’know, i’ve been here for a year and i still get lost,” he said, sharing in patroclus’ smile. the words came so easily that achilles wondered if patroclus had lifted whatever communication curse was upon him before. “this place is like a maze..”

“god, i know right? it’s so big, and there are so many buildings and no signs to tell me what's what.” it was cute how patroclus waved his hands in gestures as he spoke, and it was cute how his eyebrows scrunched up across his forehead, and it was cute how he looked at achilles when he was done talking just to check that they were in agreement. they smiled at one another, and achilles (secretly) absolutely lost it.

of course, he kept his cool, as he was used to doing so. “yeah, and half the buildings look the same.. the amount of times i’ve walked into the completely wrong dorm building..” he continued to talk, clinging on to the most random conversation topic for dear life, as it connected them thus.

“same, i swear my dorms are in a different place every day..” patroclus grinned, fidgeting happily on the spot in a way that achilles didn’t even know he found cute up until that moment. by now, achilles was running on adrenaline and flooding feelings alone, the rest of his functions having shut down a while ago.

“oh, what block are you in?” he asked, praying that he was playing this the right way.

“um, block 8b, i think?” patroclus says, accepting the question fine, distilling just a little more confidence in achilles. “i share a room with thersites and, uhh, automedon? i think that's what his name is..”

“automedon?” achilles drifted into a calmer state, but not really. “man, i love automedon. has he shown you all his photos of his prize-winning horses yet?”

achilles’ words were throw-away jumbles of letters; patroclus’ reaction to them, however, was not. he laughed.

“oh, yeah-” he stopped talking to broaden his smile. “he has. he got them out on my first day.”

“oh my god,” achilles laughed too; it just came naturally. “he’s obsessed with them, i swear. balius and xanthos, they’re called, right?”

“yep,” patroclus nodded. “i know that well, now.”

“what a legend.” achilles smiled. the joy he felt when patroclus smiled back was enough to light the darkest caverns of the world; achilles wondered if there would ever be a time where these feelings for patroclus wouldn’t burn at molten, even subliming levels, and found it highly unlikely.

this was going well; achilles was almost starting to feel like himself again. 

“so, uh, do you like it here?” achilles asked, testing his luck with a new conversation topic. it melted away easily into the climate.

“yeah,” patroclus replied, simply. he shrugged, and looked into the sun in a way that made his whole face glow as if he was the star himself. “the buildings are pretty. and everyone seems really nice..” he shrugged again, his mannerisms painting his feelings far more accurately than his words could. “i just need to get used to it.”

enchanted and trying to be understanding, achilles nodded.

“did you come here from another school?” achilles felt as if he was brushing awfully close to boiling waters with that question. patroclus nodded, in such a gentle way.

“yeah,” he said. “i got kicked from my last college. i kinda just chose the first place that would take me.”

achilles knew not to ask _why_ ; even he isn't that dense as to not know when something is out of bounds for him. instead of saying anything, he just nodded his head slowly again, and smiled in a way he prayed looked sympathetic as he let time pass between them. 

“... i’m sure you'll fit in here, though,” achilles said eventually, treading so carefully that he found himself wobbling a little. “i mean, you seem to be doing alright, already.”

“yeah,” patroclus nodded, smiling matter-of-factly, his lips a dimpled little dent on his face. “yeah. i’ll be fine, everyone here is really nice.”

achilles was definitely sure that patroclus was probably the nicest person he'd ever met, and, thus, the nicest of all the students of this college himself, but he didn't say that.

“yeah,” achilles agreed. the sun, by now, was disappearing behind distant roofs and treetops, bleeding red as it smoldered down like a cool fireplace; it was starting to get cold, as it was winter, after all. everything tied up so nicely that achilles almost let his joy show on his face.

“well, it was nice to finally meet you, patroclus,” the word ‘finally’ got slipped into that sentence by accident, but its power was overshadowed by the pure happiness achilles got from saying patroclus’ name.

“ah, you too, achilles,” patroclus said, mimicking achilles’ tone slightly; the smile they shared was warm and happy and friendly, and all that achilles had ever truly wanted.

“i’ll see you round, i guess?” achilles asked, hopefully, inching towards the door with the same effort it takes to pull yourself away from a warm fireplace, or your cozy bed in the morning. patroclus was stained blood orange in the sun’s dying lights; he was beautiful. 

“yeah,” he smiled, as shadow started to envelop him, inch by inch. “i’ll see you round.”

there was only one sliver of gold left in the sky as achilles closed the door behind him. patroclus stayed glowing on the balcony, even in the dark. he didn't know that he'd shook achilles’ world to the core, nor that he'd made achilles so happy that he couldn't stop grinning for hours (he had to take ten minutes in the bathroom to stop himself from bursting into excited chatter), nor did he know any of the wonderful things that achilles thought of him. but, now, he knew achilles; that was all that achilles could ever want- no, more than achilles ever wanted at all.

achilles realises that he is, in fact, extremely melodramatic and romantic, when he lay down in bed last night and his thoughts couldn't drag from patroclus. he wished he could paint, as to immortalise the image of patroclus in the sunset, and then he wished he had the extensive vocabulary to write down all that he felt for this one boy who he barely knew; he wished he could describe this new-found feeling of love that ruled his every action like a poet would, like the lyrics of the songs he learnt to play on guitar did.

things are different; the sun comes out often, even though it's winter, and achilles tends to notice it. when the sun hits his face, he smiles, and no one but him knows why.

**Author's Note:**

> *campus by vampire weekend plays on repeat in the far distance*
> 
> yeah. not much to say about this just that im soft and i listen to a lot of vampire weekend and im in love and i neglected all my other fics and projects to scribble this into existence to try and give myself some kind of satisfaction. 
> 
> thank you for reading, if you did!!! <3


End file.
